Talking about money can be a bit icky and make us all a bit uncomfortable but the question of the wedding photography prices is one that comes up a lot in the wedding industry and I thought I would box it off with a blog for you.

Being a professional wedding photographer isn’t just rocking up at a wedding venue with a big camera, taking some great images of you and your family looking absolutely amazing, getting home, feet up and then delivering them to you. 

As with most jobs, there is so much more that goes on behind the scenes but let’s start with everything that is needed to photograph a wedding on the day itself.

Equipment 

Cameras and lenses don’t come cheap, even more so professional level models. And we can’t have just one. We have to have at least two camera bodies as we couldn’t do a very good job if our one and only camera decided to give up halfway through your first kiss!

We also go to great lengths to keep your images as safe as we can from the moment they are taken to when they get delivered to you. That means dual slot cameras to avoid the chance of any nasty corrupted files wiping all your wedding pictures and high quality memory cards; LOTS of them. 

There is also lighting equipment, bag, harness, flash, SD card holders and comfy shoes!

Once we get home we then need backup systems and again, we use more than one. So that means several hard drives and a computer capable of handling the large RAW files that we work with and the editing software. 

Our time on the day

Whatever the length of coverage that is contracted, you can add many hours to that with editing and preparing your wedding photographs but even on the day itself we won’t stop working until we are home, unpacked and have the images backed up. That can be several thousands of files. 

You will most likely finish dancing and be tucked up in your bridal suite long before we have finished.

Personally I back up everything twice and I also then select and fully edit a number of images to be able to share one or two of your wedding highlights with you the next day all before I go to bed.

More time

One of my favourite parts of being a wedding photographer is editing. Being able to view your wedding photographs on a big screen and know how amazing the gallery will look with some editing magic. 

Before editing though I will have to go through every single image. This can be in the thousands. I will discard the blinks, the face pulls, the ugly criers and the very unflattering ones and keep for you only the best ones; the ones that together will tell the whole story of your wedding day.

Then each of those selected images, probably between 400-600 images will be edited. Yes I can batch edit and have presets to my own style BUT I will still check each image individually and make specific edits to make sure that they are looking their very best for you.

As you can imagine, this process can take many hours before they can be exported to the gallery software and I can prepare the final gallery for you. 

Expenses

Almost all of the processes that I use to ensure you get the very best experience cost a yearly subscription fee. The client management software to keep all your details safe and digitise contracts and invoicing, the editing software, the online gallery subscription and royalty free music for your slideshows.

Obviously there are other expenses not directly linked to your day but our costs of doing business; our overheads. Social media scheduling, website and hosting, equipment maintenance, gifts I send out, USB sticks, marketing material blah blah … you get the idea but I’m sure that you can see that each of them has a cost per wedding.

Education and experience

Our wedding photography experience and photographic education is unique to every one of us.

I invest every year in education for both my business management and my photography with the only goal to make my couples’ experiences better. It adds value to the service that you will be provided with. 

I understand that budgets are a reality and don’t worry, there will 100% be loads of photographers who will work within whatever budget you have. After all, there are lots of us wedding photographers out there! But understand that our prices are not based on exactly how many final photographs you will have or even the length of your day. They are based on the value of the service we will give you and our worth.

Book your photographer for the ‘thing’ that perhaps you can’t put your finger on, the feeling you get when you look at their work, the excitement you get imagining yourself in their images; every one of them a treasured memory of your amazing day.

Book them for value and worth, not just price.

For answers to more questions all about wedding photography you can head here to another blog Wedding photography frequently asked questions